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NBA Draft Lottery Preview: What’s at stake for the Cavs?

By Josh Cornelissen

Darius Garland, Cleveland Cavaliers and Adam Silver, NBA Commissioner. Photo by Sarah Stier/Getty Images
Darius Garland, Cleveland Cavaliers and Adam Silver, NBA Commissioner. Photo by Sarah Stier/Getty Images /
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Koby Altman, Cleveland Cavaliers. Photo by Jason Miller/Getty Images /

NBA Draft Lottery: What are the odds for the Cavs?

The odds for each team in the lottery are broken into two groups: their odds to land in the Top 4, and their odds to win the No. 1 overall pick. Those odds are flat for the three teams with the worst records in the league; therefore the Houston Rockets, Orlando Magic and Detroit Pistons all have a 52.1 percent chance to land in the Top 4, and a 14 percent chance to win the top overall pick.

The odds trickle down from there, with each team having a slightly worse chance to leap up than the team above them. Those odds eventually land at the Cavaliers, whose 44-38 record see them with the 14-best odds to jump up in the standings.

There is a 2.4 percent chance the league will draw a Cleveland Cavaliers ping-pong ball and the team will leap into the Top-4; that’s about a 1-in-41 chance. That may seem like a longshot, and it is, but it also means once every 41 lotteries a team should make that jump. It’s not impossible.

Much less likely, a 1-in-200 chance, is that the Cavs win the No. 1 overall pick. The Cavs once made an unlikely leap up to the first pick in 2011, when they took Kyrie Irving, but even then their odds were many times higher than the 0.5 percent they have now.

To flip things around, the Cavs have a 97.6 percent chance of picking 14th. No other option is available; either they leap up into the Top 4, or they finish 14th. More than likely the Cavs will continue evaluating late-lottery prospects this time tomorrow. But there is absolutely a chance for something more.